KPN and Rabo Bouwfonds Communication Infrastructure Fund (CIF) have decided to forego the acquisition of services company CAIW Holding BV (Caiway) by KPN.
The acquisition of CAIW encounters too many objections of the Dutch competition authority NMa. Caiway is the product name of CAIW Holding services for digital television, internet and telephony.
On May 2, 2011, KPN announced the acquisition of the service provider Caiway. The network infrastructure used Caiway, was not part of the transaction and would remain in the hands of CIF and regional cable companies.
At the time, the acquisition was subject to approval by the NMa. One of the objections that the NMa has put forward in the approval process is that the regional market share of Caiway and KPN became too big in the CAIW footprint. At the end of March 2011, Caiway had 143,000 TV customers, 74,000 internet customers and 33,000 telephony customers.
CAIW serves the municipalities of Westland, Midden-Delfland, Schiedam, Maassluis, Aalsmeer, Uithoorn, IJsselstein, Lopik (Benschop neighbourhood), Halderberge (Oudenbosch neighbourhood), The Hague (Wateringse Veld neighbourhood), Gouda and environs, Hilvarenbeek, parts of Capelle a/d IJssel, Loenen aan de Vecht, Krimpen aan den IJssel and Doorn.
In a press release, KPN said it regrets the position of the Nma: “Caiway as a service provider with an open infrastructure that believes in fibre and thus would perfectly fit in with the strategy and vision of KPN, who believes in open [fibre] communication networks.”
The failure of the acquisition of Caiway has no impact on KPN’s goal to reach a broadband market share exceeding 45% of Dutch households have by 2015.
CAI
